The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow vs Super Smash Bros. Melee vs Final Fantasy X 2009
Results Round Four Thursday, June 4th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis Not every late round match gets to be fun, and this match definitely fit that mold of not being fun. Pokemon RBY held even with Final Fantasy X for 10 minutes, but eventually felt the brunt of the SFF hammer and the match more or less ended. Final Fantasy X reaped the benefits of good bracket placement here, because Zelda is the Nintendo SFF King. Melee got absolutely destroyed in this match, and Pokemon may very well have beaten FFX if any other game from this bracket replaced Ocarina. As is, all this match proved is Pokemon resists Nintendo SFF better than Smash Brothers. This doesn't prove any FFX/Melee/RBY pecking order, doesn't settle the FFX vs Melee debate and doesn't really settle how strong Pokemon RBY truly is. It held up well yes, but it's likely on LTTP's level indirectly. Even though Final Fantasy X didn't look all too dominant leading up to this match, it made the semifinal and would only need one more stroke of luck to give us our cookie cutter final we all hoped against. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction And now for possibly the match of the year! This one has been covered just about every which way in everyone else's Crew writeups, so I'll just do some quick bullet points. * I had to push and shove just to find a way to get Ocarina above 35 in this one since none of these other options are going to collapse- rest assured that FF7's going to "beat" it for the second straight round, but that's a very tainted victory given how I don't think there are any two Nintendo games in the world more likely to hold up well against OoT (and therefore bring its percent down slightly) * insane that I have to take Melee for 4th place; this is literally the only (non-FF7) combination of games in this bracket where I'd pick that way. the bracket just produced a perfect storm that is going to leave this game in the basement despite being possibly the 4th or 5th strongest game on this site in a fair setting * FFX on the other hand is pretty clearly the weakest of these options, in my mind. considering the track record for 'weaker game advances thanks to LFF' this year, expecting it to happen here seems silly, and I agree, but... I'm doing it anyway. while it's true that FF8 didn't even come close to capitalizing on the Nintendo split, I've always felt that MGS and FF series have a little bit TOO much in common, at least when it comes to the PSX/2 era. so killing MGS ought to give FF a boost, replacing it with Melee should boost it even further, and X being a decent bit stronger than 8 in any kind of setting should be the icing on the cake * that being said, I feel awful about counting out Pokemon after all that this series has been through. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if RBY pulled a Pikachu here and advanced easily despite the long odds, and I really wish I could pull the trigger on that upset, but I just get the impression that FFX is no L-Block or Dante or Leon- its got enough of a fanbase to push it through to victory if things get tricky out there Converted into numerical form, those thoughts come out looking something like this: * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 35.05% * Final Fantasy X - 22.52% * Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow - 21.25% * Super Smash Bros. Melee - 21.18% Seems... pretty good, I think! Next Day Review Oh jeez, this is BRUTAL. Ocarina is doing to Melee exactly what it pulled on Mario 64 and Goldeneye back in '04... except SSBM doesn't get the excuse of sharing the N64, AND we thought it would hold up better than anything else (non-Pokemon), AND we thought it was flat out stronger than Mario 64/GE to begin with. Triple ouch! Looking these results over, you can't help but feel bad for Pokemon. All season long RBY has battled long odds, beating off tough competition despite having an anchor named OoT around its neck most of the time (and as Melee is showing us today, that's not a light anchor by any means!), yet it gets snubbed one step short of the Championship (seriously now, Brawl/TP/MGS4 were never going to catch it) only because FFX was handed perfect circumstances. And in other news, check out Ocarina somehow hulking up enough to actually outdo FF7 directly despite drawing its two worst possible opponents- now that's just flat out scary! That makes it 3 rounds Ocarina 1 round FF7 heading into their Championship showdown; at this poing you've pretty much got to be liking OoT in that one unless MSG4 stuns the world to knock out FFX. External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches